The big moving picture: In example you hadn't noticed, today'southward automobiles are condign increasingly digital devices. In fact, one might even argue that the next major computing device category is the car. As enticing as that vision may be, withal, it has also run into several roadblocks. Automakers are non computer makers, and the gap between the skill sets required and the skill sets available is real.

Huge, bear upon-enabled digital dashboards entice us into interacting with cars in ways that feel very similar to how nosotros work with tablets, smartphones, and other digital devices. New features uncovered through those displays provide access to data about our automobiles and the world effectually them that makes us realize how connected cars really are these days.

And let's not forget that nosotros're consuming the same kinds of digital services inside these mod cars: streaming music, video and other entertainment content, messaging, and diverse flavors of search, that nosotros eat on our other digital devices.

Toss in the possibility of things like neural network-powered autonomous driving features, and well, yeah, it really is hard not to see our cars every bit the adjacent major inflection in personal computing.

As enticing every bit that vision may exist, however, information technology has as well run into several very real roadblocks. Almost notably, automakers are not reckoner makers, and the gap between the skill sets required and the skill sets bachelor is very existent.

To put information technology bluntly, it's difficult to turn a visitor that has focused decades of effort on improving mechanical engines and bending sheet metal in clever ways into one that knows how to create and leverage deject-native software and a business concern model built around improver services. Conversely, it's a lot harder to achieve the gritty manufacturing and applied expertise of a carmaker than a lot of tech-focused companies initially thought (or were willing to acknowledge). Witness the consummate lack of actual vehicles from the many major tech powerhouses that have been rumored to have been working on automotive projects for many years now.

While it would exist piece of cake, and probably a bit fun, to speculate every bit to why nosotros are where nosotros are when it comes to the blending of the automotive and tech worlds, the simple truth is that finding the right mix of capabilities and industry cognition is just plain difficult. Information technology'southward also been made significantly harder past the fact that virtually every carmaker has had to start its digital car efforts from scratch. In that location hasn't been a common fix of standards, frameworks and methodologies, and shared software components that would let the automotive manufacture to accelerate together as a group.

Recognizing this challenge, semiconductor IP leader Arm has worked with a consortium of leading automotive and tech industry players to create SOAFEE (Scalable Open Architecture For Embedded Edge), a new open manufacture standard whose goal is to provide a common framework and digital tool set for the automotive industry.

The endeavour is designed to bring the open-source, cloud-native methodologies first enabled by major cloud computing providers similar Amazon (AWS is part of the consortium) to the automotive manufacture. Of course, equally its more than open-ended name suggests, the group also hopes to eventually bring these types of standardized tools and capabilities to other categories of edge computing devices in the future. For at present, nevertheless, the focus is clearly on the software-defined car.

Given Arm'due south critical (though oftentimes overlooked) role in the automotive manufacture, it makes perfect sense for the company to accept driven the creation of these standards and this consortium.

Arm's complete IP range of unproblematic One thousand Series microcontrollers, R Serial real-time calculating devices, and powerful A Series SoCs are used throughout probably every motorcar being fabricated today via its chip-design and manufacturing partners -- including companies like Renesas, NXP, Qualcomm, Marvell, Cypress Semiconductor, ST Micro, and many more.

The company is also uniquely positioned to accept advantage of the noesis and expertise it has gained in creating chip IP designs for the embedded edge via its Projection Cassini, as well as the software and security requirements for IoT via SystemReady. Finally, let's not forget its growing influence on cloud computing infrastructure via its Neoverse server and datacenter architecture designs.

Arguably, it is from this combination of experience that Arm recognized the opportunity to extend its learnings into the automotive infinite. Plus, while many other companies have been discussing software-divers, well, everything, as the future of many production categories -- including automotive -- Arm has the added benefit of creating designs that run across the challenging functional rubber requirements of the machine industry, such as ISO 26262. Information technology'south the combination of automotive-form safety along with deject-native capabilities and real-time operations that make the SOAFEE endeavor such an intriguing and compelling i.

Conspicuously, other central players in both the automotive and tech industries accept been inspired enough past this vision to join the try. In addition to many of its traditional silicon partners, Arm has too lined upwardly CARIAD, a Tier 1 supplier that's office of Volkswagen Group, Continental (another large tier one supplier to several major car OEMs), Reddish Hat, and the previously mentioned AWS, amongst many others, to bring together the SOAFEE Special Interest Grouping.

In addition, Arm has worked with chipmaker Ampere and IoT device maker Adlink to create two hardware development boards designed to be used past automotive supply chain players and carmakers to create and test their software applications. The AVA Programmer platform features a 32-core Neoverse-based Altra SoC from Ampere and the AVA-AP1 offers an 80-core Altra SoC that's intended for in-vehicle testing and prototyping.

On the software side, Arm has built several tools based on modernistic software technologies like containers, also every bit CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous commitment) methodologies. They're designed to permit software developers who have experience writing cloud-based applications to exercise work in the automotive space, without having to learn all the idiosyncrasies of automotive demands and requirements. In sum, they're designed to allow companies to develop and run their automotive applications in the cloud and then deploy them in the vehicle.

Plus, by leveraging open-source principles, the consortium helps to build a library of software components that can be used by multiple companies, thereby dramatically increasing the charge per unit of software advancements in the automotive space. This, in turn, should eventually lead to things like software-based feature/capability upgrades and a whole new set of business concern model and customer interaction possibilities that car makers take never been able to offering before.

Of course, talking about standards and industry consortia is a lot easier than making tangible, measurable impacts based on those ideas. Given Arm's unique position in the automotive supply chain, its related feel in other categories, and the impressive ready of partners with which this new manufacture standard is being launched, nonetheless, it certainly seems like SOAFEE is off to a solid start.

Bob O'Donnell is the founder and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Enquiry, LLC a engineering science consulting business firm that provides strategic consulting and marketplace inquiry services to the engineering industry and professional financial community. You tin follow him on Twitter @bobodtech.